Although he appeared in about a hundred movies or TV films, Douglas Elton Ulman, better known as Douglas Fairbanks Jr. never really intended to take up acting as a career. But the environment he was born into and the circumstances naturally led him to be a thespian. Noblesse oblige. The son of future silent era swashbuckling idol Douglas Fairbanks and cotton king's daughter Beth Sully, young Douglas, born in 1909, soon proved a gifted boy. And to his last day in 2000 he remained a multi-talented, hyperactive man, not content to appear in the 100 films mentioned above, far from that. Good-looking, distinguished and bright, Douglas seemed to epitomize all the qualities existing in a single person. Very sporty (like daddy!), he excelled at many sports, notably during his stay at the Military Academy in 1919 (his role in Autant-Lara's "L'athlète incomplet" illustrated these abilities, in reverse for that matter!). On the other hand he was a bright pupil, for instance at Lycéee Janson de Sailly in Paris, where he had followed his divorced mother. Very early in his life, he developed a taste for the arts as well and became an occasional but regular painter and sculptor. Of course this was not enough and, as a grown man, he showed himself active in the business field. Didn't he manage firms as varied as a mining company, a hotel group, a chain of bowling alleys, a pop corn making firm and a movie and TV company? To say nothing of his activities during World War II, during which he headed London's Douglas Voluntary Hospital (an establishment taking care of war refugees), was Roosevelt's special envoy for the Special Mission to South America in 1940 before becoming a lieutenant in the Navy (where he made his way up to captain in 1954) and being part of the Allies'landing in Sicily and Elba in 1943. Later in his life he became a committed citizen of the world, garnering many a humanitarian award. A fervent Anglophile, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was knighted in 1949 and often entertained Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in his "The Boltons" London mansion. Quite an impressive curriculum vitae, but let's not forget... movies! Starting at the tender age of of seven in the shadow of his father he was signed at the almost as tender age of fourteen by Paramount's William Elliott. He debuted in 1923's "Stephen steps out" but the film flopped and his career stagnated despite a critically acclaimed role in "Stella Dallas" in 1925. Things really picked up when he married Lucille Le Sueur, a young starlet who was to become no less than...Joan Crawford. The young couple became the toast of the town (one "Screen Snapshots" episode echoes this sudden glory) and good parts and success followed, like the villains of "Little Caesar" and "The Prisoner of Zenda" or more debonair characters in slapstick comedies or adventure yarns. Anyway the thirties was a fruitful period for Douglas who made a point of never imitating his father. After the War, his star waned and, despite a moving part in "Ghost Story" (1981), he did not appear in a major movie. Now a legend himself, Douglas Fairbanks left this world with the satisfaction of having lived up to the Fairbanks name at the end of a life nobody could call "wasted".
